English Dub Review: Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card “Sakura and the Clear Cards”

To begin a new journey, you must leave behind the last.

Overview (Spoilers)

For those of you who haven’t been into manga and anime since the 90’s, let’s get you up to speed. Sakura Kinamoto is a magical girl who, despite only being an elementary schooler, defeated a slew of magical foes, returning them to being their sealed forms of cards. These creatures are known as the Clow Cards, named for the wizard Clow Reed. During her adventures, she went from borrowing Clow’s power in the form of the cards, to taking their power as her own as Sakura Cards. It’s been a while since then, however.

Now, Sakura is entering middle school with her best friend Tomoyo. Almost on cue, her quasi-boyfriend Syaoran finishes his business in Hong Kong, and transfers to their school to be with her. That night, however, Sakura has a nightmare. She is surrounded by what appears to be her Sakura Cards, but they are blank and made of glass. She is confronted by a mysterious figure in a hooded robe, who shatters the glass cards. Sakura wakes up to find that her own cards have gone blank and clear. She takes them to Yue, one of the guardians of her powers, and even he is stumped. Syaoran’s got nothing either, but at least Tomoyo has a boatload of new magical girl costumes for Sakura to try out this time around. The next night is a turning point. The mysterious figure launches the glass shards at Sakura, and with a burst of her own magic, she transforms them into a giant crystal, and a whole new magic Key. When she awakes, she finds her new key in her hand. Just in time, too! On her way to school, she’s attacked by bursts of wind that cut through steel and concrete. Using her new Clear Key, she seals this power away as the Gale Card. But, what is this new power? Where do they come from, and what does it have to do with the mysterious figure in her dreams?

Our Take

I have been a long time fan of CLAMP. Those ladies know how to make some interesting fantasy stories, and Cardcaptor Sakura is only one of them. I’ve read the original manga of Magic Knight Rayearth, Angelic Layer, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, and (my favorite) xxxHolic. So, when Clear Card came across my radar, I was thrilled. I never managed to get a hold more than a few episodes of the original, and the American adaptation as Cardcaptors was tough to watch. That was back in the days when the companies doing the dubs felt they had to censor and Americanize everything, and they chopped the show to bits, going as far to rename characters and change relationships instead of simply translating the show. This time, however, it looks like Funimation is giving us a straight port. Caitlin Glass is in charge of this one, so I’m pretty certain we’re in good hands. If her name doesn’t ring a bell, she was the ADR Director for Ouran High School Host Club (which I hear is coming back soon), a good chunk of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and more recently, all of Sakura Quest. All of these had excellent localization in my opinion.

This episode, however, has some issues in its plot structure. Most of this is because it is the first episode of a sequel to a series that ended seventeen and a half years ago. Clear Card picks up shortly after the end of the Sakura Card Arc, which means that three seasons and a movie have to be recapped for those who are just jumping in for the first time. We spend a large amount of time with Sakura running around and getting in contact with everyone from the previous stories, just so we can introduce everyone and see where they’ve gone since we last saw them. Unfortunately, this takes up the first half of the episode. It makes for slow going and is a bit too obvious for my taste. The worst part is that most of it is superfluous. We don’t actually need to see many of the characters that are brought in, as they don’t actively participate in the plot of the episode. We didn’t need the phone conversation with Erriol. And as tooth-shatteringly sweet as it is to see Sakura and Syaoran’s relationship rekindle, I feel like it bringing him in on this first episode is too much instant gratification. The scene where he returns is powerful but diminished for the viewer. Let us see her pine for him a bit, even for an episode, and him popping in with that bear becomes triumphant. Instead, we get about five or ten minutes of her wanting him to be there and… he’s there!

Once we get to the halfway point of the episode, however, things take off. Sakura is launched into her new adventure, and we meet up with one of the only characters from the original manga we didn’t get to see yet. He serves an actual purpose here, acting as tech support for her powers and letting us know that whatever is happening is something new. One thing happens after another, with little to no break between events. The two halves of the episode feel almost completely different. The first half is so slow and unnecessary, then the second is fast and compelling. Though this is also like Sakura’s life (the peace and quiet shattered by the new events), it makes for disjointed viewing. I can forgive some of that because of the nature of the episode, but it could have been handled differently.

You know what isn’t disjointed? The animation. With the exception of a few effects, the entire episode is traditional animation, and it is even better than it was in the old series. The environments are gorgeous, and the characters feel much more a part of them than even most modern anime. Linework flows between crisp and clean in the narrative scenes to stylized and flowing in comical scenes. The reunion of Sakura and Syaoran is utterly beautiful, with blur and colored linework filling the shot with light and warmth. The episode doesn’t shy away from complex animations, even if we don’t have a whole lot of truly dynamic camera angles. I hope this series keeps up like this and doesn’t fade into “blah” in three episodes.

So, what’s left to talk about? Oh, yeah! The voice acting! Monica Rial and Jason Liebrecht are back as Sakura and Syaoran. No, they didn’t play them in Cardcaptors. They played the characters’ alternate reality versions much more recently in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. The remaining cast is brand new to these characters, but they seem like they fit. Natalie Hoover’s version of Tomoyo is in a really high and squeaky register, but she just barely manages to dodge the frequencies that annoy me. Monica Rial, on the other hand, occasionally hits those notes when she portrays Sakura being emphatic. However, this feels right to me. A girl of that age would sound like that when putting force behind her words. Beyond that, the script written by Bonny Clinkenbeard clicks well with the animation in all but one or two lines, and everything sounds like it fits, so who am I to complain?